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Virgin Interactive Ltd (UK)
Background: Virgin Games was a prolific British game developer and publisher formed in 1981, as a part of Richard Branson's brand empire Virgin. They purchased Mastertronic in 1987 and were renamed Virgin Interactive in 1994. The company faced demise in later 90's, when U.S. assets were acquired by Electronic Arts and European assets passed to Titus Interactive. In 2002 the Spanish branch of Virgin spun off and was separated under the name Virgin Play. 1st Logo (1985-1994) Nickname: "Virgin Shield" Logo: On a black background, we see a gradient red box. Inside is the corporate Virgin logo surrounded by a white circle. The word "GAMES" appears below the box. Variants: *Several early games have the circle rotating and the logo wiping inside. *On 11th Hour, the 3D cube is being collected from the flying panels. *Some games, like Terminator for Sega CD, use a spinning cube with the logo on each side. FX/SFX: None for the standard version, or early computer effects for variations. Cheesy Factor: The animated variants are very cheap, the spinning cube sometimes looks bad even for the time. Music/Sounds: None for the still version. The animated variants sometimes use a triumphant fanfare. Availability: Common on a number of games. Scare Factor: None. 2nd Logo (1991) Nickname: "8-Bit Virgin Atlantic" Logo: Set in the sky, with a huge cloud underneath, we see a red airplane tail with the corporate Virgin logo on it. It passes from right to left, leaving what looks like smaller clouds. When the plane leaves, the clouds (22 of them, to be exact) morph into the words "Virgin Games Presents..." and we fade out. FX/SFX/Cheesy Factor: The plane flying to the left and the clouds morphing into "Virgin Games Presents...". Not bad for 8-bit animation. Music/Sounds: The buzzing of the plane, and a downward 8-bit synth flourish, which is part of the intro to M.C. Kids/McDonaldland. Availability: This was only used on the infamous NES game M.C. Kids. This is not present on the PAL version, titled McDonaldland; instead, it is replaced by the words "OCEAN", as Ocean Software published it in that territory. Scare Factor: None. 3rd Logo (1992-1994) Nickname: "Simple Virgin" Logo: This is just the corporate Virgin logo on a black background. Variants: *On Dune for Sega CD, the background is grey, and the stacked words "Interactive Entertainment" appear below the logo. *On Super Slap Shot ''(SNES, 1993) the logo is inside a gray circle with white background. The word "PRESENTS" appears below in rainbow colors. *On ''11th Hour, the 3D-looking logo lies on a timeboard. The URL appears below. *On Cool Spot for Amiga, Spot can be seen walking below the logo. FX/SFX: None unless you count the variants. Music/Sounds: None Availability: Scarce. Seen on Krusty's Fun House,'' Alien 3'' and Cool Spot for Amiga and'' Lost Vikings'' for Genesis. Scare Factor: None. 4th Logo (1993-1996, 1998) GW191H142.png GW249H142.gif GW251H142.jpeg Nickname: "Virgin Rectangle" Logo: The Virgin logo is white, surrounded by a white circle and placed inside a red square. The square itself appears in the top side of the white rectangle. The words take lower side, reading "INTERACTIVE''' entertainment'" with "INTERACTIVE" in Trajan Pro font in two lines, separated with a line. Variants: *Early variant used the Virgin Games shield. *The shieldless version (2nd photo) was used on several games. It was seen on ''The Lion King for Game Gear (in a very simple quality, of course) and later, appeared with 3D effect. *There is an animated logo on Harvester. The red square zoomed into the white rectangle. *There are two custom animated logos, they are listed below separately. *On Demolition Man for 3DO, the logo was seen as a glass outline, lighted with a splash. *This logo appears in the intro for Spot Goes to Hollywood, but uses the 6th logo in-game. FX/SFX: None. Music/Sounds: None. On'' Harvester'', there is a background tune followed with metallic creaking. Availability: Common. Seen on Harvester, The Lion King for Game Gear, Iron Assault,'' Cool Spot'','' Overlord'','' Disney's Aladdin'','' Gamera'', and Cannon Fodder. The logo with an old-style shield can be seen on Genesis games Dune: The Batle for Arrakis, The Lion King, Pinocchio, and'' The Legend of Kyrandia: Hand of Fate''. Strangely, this makes a surprise appearance (without the shield) on Super Dany for SNES. This logo appears on earlier Capcom titles on the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in Europe such as Street Fighter'' Alpha'', Street Fighter Alpha 2, Mega Man X3 and Resident Evil ''(PlayStation and PC (in North America as well)only, the Sega Saturn version was published by Capcom) Scare Factor: None. However, the animation on ''Harvester ''looks better. Nickname: "Laser Virgin" Logo: On a red background, several burning dots appear and create the Virgin logo. Another dot runs over the circle. The logo zooms in and returns with the full name below. FX/SFX: Burning and smoke effects. Music/Sounds: Sounds of burning and synth noise. Availability: Rare. Appears on ''Zone Raiders and Cyberia 2. Scare Factor: Low. Nothing compares to the next logo though... GW283H198.png GW264H212.png Snapshot 11.png GW202H151.jpeg Nickname: "Creepy Virgin Eye" Logo: We cut to a closed eye. The eyelid opens and we zoom in on the eye, with "PICTURE START" flashing dead center, and a whole bunch of technological stuff (including what looks like the logo of UK Channel Five flashing in the bottom left) flashing quickly as the eye moves all around and dilates. At the end, a white variant of the Virgin logo zooms in on a red ball, with a chyroned "INTERACTIVE" in the bottom right corner as a fireball moves up the eye. Variants: *On Neo Hunter, only the end of the logo is shown, and is extremely slowed down to keep in sync with the music. *On Toonstruck, the name which appears below reads "INTERACTIVE entertainment", with a line separating the words and a large TM symbol next to it. *On a Virgin Interactive 1996 Christmas trailer, the logo's framerate is more smoother than before, and there is no TM symbol on the top of "INTERACTIVE entertainment" FX/SFX: Good CGI animation. Cheesy Factor: the "Interactive"/ "Interactive entertainment" wording is cheaply chyroned in. Music/Sounds: A loud rock riff with a heart monitor that gets higher and faster, and various PA system announcements over it. A faint heartbeat at the end. Availability: Can be seen on PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PC games like Grid Runner, S''pot Goes to Hollywood'','' Toonstruck'', Neo Hunter ''and ''Nanotek Warrior. Scare Factor: Medium to nightmare, due to the in-your-face eye and the sudden, loud music. Nickname: "Laser Virgin II" Logo: On a black background, we see a yellow-orangeish laser drawing the Virgin logo text, in yellow. We pan to the left, to see it in the right direction. When is done, it flashes to reveal the normal Virgin Interactive shield. The logo zooms in, filling the screen red, then fades out. FX/SFX: The laser effects. Cheesy Factor: The transition splash looks very cheap. Music/Sounds: Harsh fireworks and engine sounds. Availability: It was seen on Hyper 3-D Pinball, also known as Tilt! Scare Factor: Minimal. The flash might get you, but otherwise, it's harmless and much less scary than the previous and next logo. 8th Logo(1996-1999) Nickname: "Creepy Virgin Eye II", "Throbbing Virgin Eye" Logo: Same as the previous logo, but at the end the camera zooms out of the eye which closes and has the Virgin logo in a red oval, on the left side of a red oblong shape with "INTERactive" on it (9th logo itself). The eye throbs. FX/SFX: Same as before, but with the additional edits . Music/Sounds: Same as before, likely having louder beeps. Music/Sounds Variants:*''Broken Sword 2 has the music out of sync with the animation. Availability: Common, this is very easy to find in Europe as various Capcom titles such as ''Resident Evil 2 (PlayStation version, the Dreamcast version has the next logo below), Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter and Capcom Generations ''have this logo. Outside of Capcom games and in North America as well, the logo is seen on games such as'Disney's Hercules Action Game (The PAL version doesn't have this logo, and instead replaced with the Sony Computer Entertainment Europe logo), ''Golden Nugget, Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror, and the infamously canceled-then-leaked Thrill Kill. Scare Factor: Same as before. The eye throbbing at the end could make the scare factor a little higher. 9th Logo (1999-2002) Nickname: "Horizontal Shield" Logo: On a rainbow-colored background, numerous versions of a horizontal shield rotate around the central point. They merge into one shield, with an oval addition at the left and the word "INTERactive" on the right. In the oval there is a Virgin logo. The structure glows. Variants: *On'' Ignition'', the car wheel creates the logo. Then the car crashes off-screen, and the shield jumps. *On many games, like the PAL Dreamcast version of Resident Evil 3 and Lotus Challenge, a still version is used. FX/SFX: The shield copies move, the shield shines. Music/Sounds: A tune with whooshing element, or the opening theme of the game. A different tune can also be used, as in Availability: Seen on games such as Original War,'' 'Screamer Rally' and ''Heist. ''Also appears on Capcom's later non-self published titles in PAL regions such as the Dreamcast version of ''Resident Evil 2 ''and 3, ''Marvel Vs. Capcom, Dino Crisis, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Gigawing.' Scare Factor: Minimal. This logo is a favourite of many and is a huge improvement over the previous and 6th logos. 10th Logo (1998-2004) Nicknames: "The Face", "Super Scary Face", "(The) SSF", "Robot", "Splaat", "Ink Splaat", "Disjointed Facial Features", "That Even Stranger Logo After ''Rugrats", "The Signature Scary Logo", "Boxes from Hell II", "What Were They Thinking?", "Why I Never Watch Past the Credits of Rugrats" Logo: Over a static purple background, a black ink stain on a blue background with a liquid effect appears by splattering all over the screen. A hand passes by and drops magazine clippings of eyes and a mouth in brown bars onto the liquid background (the eye also from the previous but without eyelash) to make a face, (named "Link"). The Link then says the company name as white blocks fly out from his mouth. The blocks arrange themselves to form the K-C logo (like before, but refined to match the print logo). During the face's screen time, there are holes in the liquid background which reveal some of the purple background that emerge from the center and slide off screen from many different directions. After that, the background and the face disappear like a CRT television turning off, and the "white paint" in "Virgin INTERactive" turns white and flashes faintly. Trivia: *Strangely, this logo appeared on early airings of the SpongeBob episode "Wet Painters/Krusty Krab Training Video". It was an editing mistake made by Nickelodeon when they first started doing the split-screen credits. Normally, Nick makes custom split-screen credits for each toon and its producers. K-C was the only one that produced multiple Nicktoons, and Nick created a generic one for these shows mentioned Klasky and Csupo as producers and included Splaat, but, on the said episode of SpongeBob, Nick accidentally used the K-C split screen credits for that episode. As of 2006, the logo is replaced by the United Plankton Pictures logo on repeat airings (which was in the original credits to begin with). Still, it is one of the oddest editing mistakes ever made. *On October 2015 to circa May 2017 airings of Hey Arnold!'' on The Splat, this logo appeared instead of the Snee-Ooshlogo for the same reason stated above. This was fixed by the time the programming block was rebranded into "NickSplat".' *At the July 2012 Comic-Con venue in San Diego, California, the day before Klasky-Csupo was relaunched, Arlene Klasky mentioned that she found, as claimed, "a bunch of fan mashups" of their production logo, in which she also added that the mashups might have been created in part with how many people explained their experience with the logo as kids, and how it "scared" them, so she later decided to give the "robot" character a name: Splaat. Splaat was also given arms, legs and a more noticeable ability to speak. Actor, musician and professional surfer Greg Cipes (known for voicing Beast Boy in Teen Titans ''(2003)) is responsible for the voicing of Splaat. The character was originally intended to be in an animated PSA, with Splaat explaining his confusion onto why these mashups exist, and then adding that he is, in fact, ''not a robot, but rather an ink splat, which is how his name originated. He stars in his own web series, which you can see here. You can see Splaat's PSA here, or the full Comic-Con event here. It is also worth mentioning that, according to Klasky, this logo was not intended to be scary. Variants: *There was a different variant where the animation was cheaper (e.g. the liquid just waves like a flag, there's no static purple background explains very few holes emerging from the center once the liquid background has splattered onto the screen, the eyes of Splaat are flipped vertically instead of being animated to look down/up). There is a black background instead of a static purple background (since the logo transitions from black at the end of the credits); the logo blurs and cross-fades to the KC logo rather than disappearing like the TV turning off (along with the the purple "Y'" in "'Virgin INTERactive" zooming in over the regular "Y") and, to top it all off, Link constantly looks at the viewer (in the normal logo, Splaat stares at the blocks, but the blocks are placed directly in the center of the screen, so it appears that Splaat is looking at the viewer) throughout his screen time and smiles as if he accomplished something before the logo wipes to black. On the studio's reopening video, the variant is in 16:9 full screen at 1080p high definition, it is cut to where the hand drops the magazine clippings, and after the we hear the duck quacking twice, the logo flies off to the right of the screen. The "boing" sound effect is not heard. *This logo comes in 3 versions: a standard 4:3 version (for TV shows and full frame versions of their film output, though some films have slight letterboxing), a 1.55:1 widescreen version (matted to 1.85:1 for theatrical features released in the US (1.66:1 in Europe) and to 1.78:1 for both home video releases of those films and the final season of All Grown Up), a 16:9 HD version (for the studio's reopening video) and a 2.35:1 scope version (seen at the end of The Wild Thornberrys Movie). *On The Rugrats Movie and Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, the animation is choppier and in a more washed-out color scheme, and in warp speed as well, resulting in the audio being out-of-sync. To accommodate this, the ending sound effects are sped up (this also occurs on the alternate variant). *On The Wacky Adventures of Ronald McDonald, the logo cuts to black just as the "Boing" sound effect plays. *Sometimes on All Grown Up, the "Y" in "'K'L''a''S'K'''Y" is pink instead of purple. This variant is extinct; it was last seen on 2011 reruns of the show on Nick. *On NickSplat, the ink splattering is omitted, and the rest of the logo is in warp speed. FX/SFX: The "animated" paper-clippings that form the face, the static background, the ink, and the print logo. All CGI animation... Cheesy Factor: ...that's far off the scales in cheapness. It looks like the logo was done in half an hour by a second grader using Blender. Plus, Splaat looks unnecessarily creepy, and we hear random sound effects again. For the alternate variant, the liquid background and Splaat come out even more cheaply animated (one example of this is Splaat's eyes zooming in instead of being dropped by the hand (this also happens in the original variant but it's less apparent)), and why exactly does Splaat constantly stare at the viewer and smile? It's very unnerving. Also, the black ink stain looks like a badly-done parody of Nickelodeon's splat logo. Music/Sounds: A "splattering" sound when the ink appears, and a bouncy "beeping" version of the 24-note bass jingle from the 1990 logo plays during Splaat's screen time, except the first measure of the jingle has been cut, meaning that only 18 notes are played. Another "beepy" instrument plays the same jingle in the background, only it comes in a quarter measure late. The company name is stated in a robotic voice (hence the "Robot" nickname. The voice was supplied by the "Boing" novelty voice in the the text-to-speech program on Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X). After the company logo appears, we hear several cartoon sound effects: a tiny boing, a lip-flapping sound, a duck quacking twice, and the classic Hanna-Barbera boing. Music/Sounds Variants: *Sometimes the music is in warp speed (most likely on PAL television or media due to speedup). *On the still video game variants, it's silent. *On early television airings of ''Rugrats episodes with this logo, the logo theme is low-pitched. *Some recent airings of Rugrats omit the boing sound. *On Rocket Power, ''the last note of the end theme of said show trails off into the logo (a rock chord before the jingle plays). Some ''Rugrats ''episodes also had the last note of the end theme echo into the logo. *On 2004-2008 airings of ''Rugrats, the boing sound trails off to the Nickelodeon logo. Availability: Fairly Scarce. It was founded from Death Killer for PS2? Scare Factor: Depending on the logo variant: *Standard version: Depending on how you feel about Link, it can range from low to nightmare. Link's face looks very creepy, as if he was something that came right out of a nightmare, the ink splatter is jarring, and the rest of the logo is random and disjointed. Children will probably gain nightmares from this, though others can find it be funny or merely annoying. Nonetheless, it's quite possibly one of the most infamous logos ever, for better or worse, and is very popular among and outside the logo community due to its "scary" status. *Alternate variant: Medium to nightmare; the added bonus of Link smiling can be even more unsettling. The black background and unexpected transition from the credits to the logo doesn't help. It can be decreased to medium for those who expected this (although it would be unlikely expected due to only appearing once and only once). *Still variant: None, as it skips Link altogether. Category:Nightmare Logos Category:Logos Category:Heart attack Category:WHYYYYYYYYY Category:Virgin